Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature : How Civilization Destroys Happiness

This book was written to get us in touch with our own human nature―the inborn recipe of requirements for human wellbeing.

In case you haven't noticed, civilization wants us to follow a totally different recipe―one that keeps telling us to ignore what we feel, and act otherwise. This book tells the truth about what humans need to be happy, and how our civilized way of life insists that we spend the vast majority of our time doing the opposite of what we feel.

Evolution made us what we are―feeling beings. And that is how humanity lived, developed, and thrived, in intimate small groups of people who trusted, supported, and protected each other completely. Today, we all live largely in a state of emotional isolation from others. We feel the absence of intimacy―our most powerful need.

Most modern humans are aware of the anxieties and irritations of our modern lives, but we accept them as part of life-itself. So, most readers of this book will be shocked to find out how many of those things we call problems are not our own fault, at all, but are brought on by the unnatural weight of what civilization requires of us, emotionally. It wasn't just to shock you that I wrote this book. I wrote it to bring a change in perspective that will free us from the grip that modern institutions now have on the psyche of every human alive.

Chet Shupe is an electronics engineer who suffered from severe Attention Deficit Disorder for most of his life. After years of depression and feeling bewildered by the world around him, he was finally diagnosed at age 43, and after beginning treatment with Ritalin, life suddenly made sense.

Shupe emerged from ADD with a unique perspective on the human condition. His engineer's mind forced him to ask basic questions about the brain's purpose, how the mind is organized, why feelings exist, the origin of good and evil, the true dynamics of every relationship, and how all of this relates to our happiness and to the wellbeing of humanity. For years he's pursued the answers to these questions with passion and conviction, digging deep into the intricacies of the modern social contract to question how well it serves us both individually and collectively. As a scientist, he bolsters every conclusion with logical and compelling examples. As a person of feeling and intuition, he expresses his hopes for humanity with genuine compassion and sincerity. As a whistleblower to the world, he speaks with urgency about the need to rediscover our connections with our own Nature, if we are ever again to experience the contentment of sisterhood and brotherhood that is our natural heritage.